The Los Angeles Dodgers clinched their 13th National League West title in the last 14 seasons, and now all that remains to do is stay in front of the Atlanta Braves down the stretch to secure a first-round bye.
“It’s always helpful in the sense of giving your guys a break to reset. But given all the tax and where our guys are health-wise, to get that week would be huge,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts recently said. “We’ve still got to play well to finish out the season to get to that point. There’s a lot of people that could use the break.”
The Dodgers have a four-game lead over the Braves for the second seed in the NL. L.A. needs to finish with a better record than the Braves by virtue of not holding the head-to-head tiebreaker.
The top seed in the NL is within reach for the Dodgers, but they do not control their own destiny due to trailing the Milwaukee Brewers in the standings. Furthermore, the Dodgers also don’t have the tiebreaker over the Brewers.
Securing home-field advantage throughout the postseason would certainly be of value, but finishing as one of the top two division winners in the NL is of greater importance.
Some of the notable injuries the Dodgers are dealing with include Shohei Ohtani, Edgardo Henriquez, Andy Pages, Will Klein and, most recently, Blake Snell.
The Wild Card Series begins Tuesday, Sept. 29, while the NL Division Series starts Saturday, Oct. 3.
Pages and Ohtani are expected to be activated prior to the regular season concluding, and there is optimism Snell will avoid going on the injured list.
Henriquez is eligible to return on the same day the Wild Card round begins. Meanwhile, Klein can’t return until the NLDS starts. It is not a given that the Dodgers would elect to have Klein on their postseason roster given his two-month absence, but they would still prefer to have the option.
Dodgers postseason outlook
Should the Dodgers remain the No. 2 seed in the NL postseason bracket, they would face the Wild Card winner of the matchup between the third division champion and sixth-place team. However, who that could be is still very much in question in part because of a late surge from the San Diego Padres.
The Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies and Padres are all in a dead heat and mathematically possible of slotting into any order as the three Wild Card teams.
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